Last week Garin and I ventured out to the Wild West to surf some powder and to see one of my old college roomies. We left P-cola early on Wednesday morning and arrived in Denver around noon. Since Lauren and Andy were at work we took a trip to downtown Denver and wondered around until we found the flagship REI (the first one in America!). It was in this really cool old train station and was HUGE!! 
After we hung out with Lauren and Andy on Wednesday night we headed out to the mountains on Thursday morning. We took the advice of this nice guy at REI and took the scenic route over the hills and it was BEAUTIFUL! Below is a drive by shooting that I took in a valley surrounded by the beautiful Rockies:
Thursday afternoon we arrived in Avon, a cute little ski town at the base of Beaver Creek Ski Resort. We took in the beautiful mountains and hung out in the hot tub getting ready for a day of skiing (Garin) and snowboarding (Lauren) on Friday. Friday morning we got up bright and early and headed out to carve it up at Copper Mountain (they had a great buy one get one free deal if you bought 10 gals of gas at a Shell Station...and thankfully Lauren G hooked us up with a receipt she had!). 
Copper Base: check out the half pipe to the right...I accidentally was one of the first down it on this day. I was trying to cut over to get back to this lift and realized too late that I couldn't get over there without taking the pipe. So I popped some double corks and ended it with a McTwist Deluxe...I think I scored like a 48 or something... haha riiiiiight.
My trusty steed - you can't tell it, but it sparkles, that's my favorite part. I got made fun of quite a few times for my step-in bindings by the lift peeps, they're supposedly old school. But I like them! I heard they are unsafe so I might have to downgrade to the strap ins ;(
My hot ski bunny. We was best buddies and stayed together all day :)
Wow, those goggles look REALLY big...but they sure did make it a bunch easier to see while it was snowing and they sure did keep my face from freezing!!
After a great day of skiing on Friday, Lauren and Andy met us up in the mountains for a sleep over! It was just like college again :) haha. After falling asleep while watching the Olympic opening ceremonies we all got up early on Sat morning and hit the slopes at Beaver Creek.
Me and Dr. Gainor
Fellow boarders
It was really cool going with L and A because they challenged me to try some things I've never tried before on my board (I usually just go down the mountain). Andy introduced us to the "beginners" terrain park where we went over some "tables" and I even did some jumps and got some air!! All of the pictures from that are on L and A's camera so hopefully they can send me some or post them on their blog. At one point I was getting pretty confident in my new found boarding abilities and tried a rail...it was one of those that starts off parallel to the ground and then has an angled drop down...I made it down the straight part but the angled part did me in! Before I knew it my board fell off the end and I fell down with one leg on either side of the rail...needless to say, I put quite a nice bruise on my tail end! But as Andy said, if you don't come back with a few bruises you haven't had a good day! I wasn't as adventuresome on the rails after that spill! However, I did get brave enough to venture off the combed trails into the trees where the powder was about 2 foot deep! Man if you fall back there, which I did quite frequently, you basically had to grab one of the nearby trees to pull yourself up because the powder was so deep...it was awesome! We found some other ungroomed, untreed, areas to do some powder boarding...so different from regular boarding, but AWESOME! Man, I'm so jealous of L and A for being so close to the mountains (well, in the winter, I think I'll stick with my beach for the summer!).
How beautiful is this?! Fortunately I took this picture early in the morning because the clouds rolled in around lunch time (as Andy predicted) and the snowed started falling pretty thickly! There were times when I couldn't see well enough to tell if I was going across the mountain or down it (I could have fallen off the side of the mountain and not known it)! As you'll see in the next picture, the snow made the roads pretty crazy, all those trucks were having to stop put on chains!
The plan was to head back to Denver on Sat night but it sure was a treacherous trip! By the time we left it had been snowing pretty hard for the past 4 or 5 hours so even though the roads had been salted and plowed they still weren't in the best condition. We went the "longer" way to bypass the normal ski traffic and although there wasn't much traffic on that route, I did A LOT of praying as we went over the mountains on snowy roads with no guard rails!! Whew, I was praising God when we got back to L and A's house!
We woke up on Sunday to about 3 inches of fresh snow...beautiful! We went to church and then came back and just did a Sunday chill. In the late afternoon Garin and I borrowed L and A's sleds and went across the road to the neighborhood sledding hill to act like the "southerners who never see snow" that we are. It was pretty fun :)
On Monday L and A had to work so G and I decided to make a trek down to see Pike's Peak. Unfortunately when we got there the road wasn't opened all the way to the top so we decided not to drive up. Instead, in the spirit of the current times, we went and toured the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO. It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be, but it was neat to think about the many awesome athletes who had trained there. Man there are some CRAZY Olympic Sports...like trampolining. I mean, if I'd known that was an Olympic sport I would have been more diligent practicing it out in my backyard as a child!! I'll have to brush up on my Olympic "sports" when I have children so that I can encourage them get there foot into one of those obscure sports that no one aspires to ;)
We got to hang out with L and A one last time on Monday night and then we headed out EARLY on Tuesday morning to fly back to ol' P-cola. It was awesome to get to see them (hadn't seen them in about 2 years). Gotta love those friends that you haven't see in forever but then just pick back up without skipping a beat. Thanks SO much Lauren and Andy for letting us come vacation with you. Ya'll were awesome hosts! Lauren, you amaze me with the fact that you can work a 10 hour day at the hospital and then come home and fix a delicious dinner and be that great wife! I'm so thankful to have both of you as friends, ya'll bring me so much joy :)
Well that was our vacation. I think I just made up for not posting in forever...I packed it all into one ;) haha. Peace out!
